A Lost Craft

So people will ask me..”What do you do for a living?” and I always respond with “I manufacture custom drapes”. Almost always the response is “Well you don’t actually make them here in America do you?”.

It really is incredible how American Manufacturing is almost all but extinct. People who actually make things here built the foundation for America. They powered us through World War Two and created generations of skilled artisans.

The industrial revolution propelled the United States to it’s prominence in the World as a true “Super Power”. It brought us wealth and security. It provided our Workers with an “Honest Days Pay for an Honest Days Work”. It help build our value system.

Today we living in the “Electronic Revolution” where nearly everything we do is on some type of “electronic platform”. We are captivated with instant messaging and immediate availability of nearly everything we desire. Circa 1940 Singer Drapery Tacker

At DrapeStyle we are embracing both the old an the new. We still manufacture our drapery on machines that are older than any Employee we have, and probably older than the combined ages of our Web Developers. I actually love our machines. I don’t spend nearly as much time with them as I do my shiny new iMac or my iPad but I will often walk our onto our production floor and look at some of our old Singers and think that they were the most state of the art equipment of their era. And the reality of it is, they will still be state of the art when my iPad is long obsolete.